In an interview with a newspaper this weekend Education Secretary, Michael Gove outlined plans to remove ‘bureaucratic’ admissions restrictions from the most popular schools in England.

Good schools are inundated each year with admissions applications from local families and those just outside catchment areas are often disappointed. One in seven pupils failed to get a place at their first choice of secondary school this year alone. Mr Gove explained that he hopes to remove restrictions on the expansion of these most popular schools and allow them to take on more pupils. This could mean that more pupils would be offered a place at their first choice of school.

In a revealing interview with the Guardian newspaper, Mr Gove explained that he hoped to "remove bureaucracy" affecting the expansion of schools. The government is planning to publish a revised schools admission code this summer detailing the proposals which would apply to all state schools in England.

It is expected that proposals will include the removal of the requirement for schools to seek local-authority permission for the expansion of pupil numbers. Mr Gove said, "I think it's wrong to have a situation where the local authority says: 'This is a good school, it's full up, parents have to go to the less good school down the road'. As a result of the local authority's failure to deal with educational underperformance, children continue to go to a poor school."

As schools are funded according to the number of pupils they have, the proposals are likely to have as many detractors as supporters. With the good schools expanding and taking on more and more pupils, the poorer schools could see equal decline in numbers and therefore inevitably in their funding. However, Mr Gove hopes that this will put pressure on underperforming schools to improve.

He said: "We hope the new admissions code allows the possibility of increasing planned admissions numbers so good schools can expand, and there will be underperforming schools that have fewer and fewer numbers. That will compel their leadership and the local authority to ask: what's wrong?”